After seven years of development on Earth and seven months traveling through interplanetary space, NASA’s Perseverance rover will attempt a daredevil landing on the surface of Mars on Thursday.
As the biggest and fastest rover ever sent to the red planet, Perseverance is a science powerhouse. But the rover’s huge 2,260-pound frame also makes its nail-biting descent the most dangerous Mars landing ever attempted, according to NASA. The so-called “seven minutes of terror,” which refers to the amount of time it will take Perseverance to execute its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence.
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VICE News’ livestream coverage of the landing will begin in the leadup to Perseverance’s arrival on the Martian surface, either as an intact robot or as a pile of very expensive rubble. NASA also has a Spanish-language livestream available as Perseverance approaches its final destination.
Though the rover’s wheels should hit the ground at around 3:44pm EST, it will take roughly 11 minutes for signals from the rover to reach Earth, so the official confirmation of a successful touchdown is expected around 3:55pm.
Much like NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, Perseverance’s seven minutes of terror will be entirely automated, so the mission team will have to nervously wait for news of a successful arrival without any way to intercede on issues that may arise.
The audacious sequence will begin when the spacecraft slams into the Martian atmosphere at about 12,000 miles per hour. Though the skies of Mars are much thinner than Earth, its heat shield will still reach temperatures of 1,300° Celsius (2,370° Fahrenheit) due to the frictional forces the spacecraft will encounter.
About four minutes after its first brush with the atmosphere, Perseverance should have slowed down enough to deploy the biggest supersonic parachute ever sent to another planet. Twenty seconds later, it will jettison its heat shield, enabling the rover to use its radar system to scan its target landing site in Jezero Crater.
Scientists think this crater is an ancient lakebed, which makes it a perfect place for Perseverance to hunt around for signs of Martian life that may have existed during the planet’s warmer, wetter phase some 3.6 billion years ago. But the very characteristics that make Jezero such a compelling landing site also make it a treacherous place to touch down, as the lakebed is filled with variable and hazardous terrain shaped by bygone currents.
For this reason, Perseverance is the first Mars mission equipped with Terrain Relative Navigation, which will help the rover take images of the Martian surface so it can search for a safe site to land.
“This is finally like landing with your eyes open,” said Swati Mohan, the guidance, navigation, & control operations lead on Perseverance, in a video outlining the EDL sequence. “Having this new technology really allows Perseverance to land in much more challenging terrain than Curiosity of any previous Mars mission could, amongst the rocks and the craters and the cliffs.”
One minute before it is due to land, Perseverance will get rid of its backshell and the retrorockets on its descent stage will fire, which will slow it down even further and guide it to a suitable place to touch down.
This triggers the wildest part of the whole sequence: the sky crane maneuver, which was also used during the Curiosity landing. The descent stage of the vehicle will hover about 25 feet above the Martian surface and carefully lower Perseverance down to the ground using nylon tethers. Once its wheels make contact, the descent stage will move laterally to crash a safe distance from it.
That’s a lot of complex moves to pull off correctly in a very short period of time. But if Perseverance is able to stick the landing, it will be one of the most consequential surface missions ever sent to Mars. Not only will the rover be able to search for signs of Martians in this ancient crater, it will also be the first step in a three-part relay race that will return Martian samples to Earth for the first time.
So cross your fingers, knock on wood, and generally send good vibes to this intrepid mission as it closes in on its final destination.
